Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Translations As Representations Of Cultural Bias, Sarah Theimer

Faculty Publications

A presentation at the American Library Association's Midwinter Conference this presentation discusses how translations are not simply the movement of a resource from the source language to the target language. Transitioning a work into another language necessarily carries with it the bias of the target culture. Bias is demonstrated in different ways. Publishers decide what should and should not get published. Translators decide what should get included in the text to be meet the expectations of the source culture. Translations are often are incompletely described in library catalogs, which further inhibit the users' ability to make an informed choice.